Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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Black Wingnut: Obama Hurting Black Community Because ‘The Ghey!’

Patrick Wooden, a black wingnut minister who just loves to rant about those evil gay people, says that President Obama’s support for gay rights and equality is hurting black families, who have to explain to their kids why the president supports things they don’t like. And haven’t black people suffered enough already without that?

My position is African Americans are people also, we want the same things that all other Americans want, we are a part of this country, we have built this country, so we should be counted also and considered. Our families, our homes have been decimated, and with the things that have happened in our community, do we need to add to it a President where little black boys and little black girls are hearing this great man in the most powerful position in the land say ‘I believe same-sex marriage is the direction that the country ought to go in.’ Then that same little black boy or little black girl looks to the heroes in the black community at the local level which are the preachers and the community leaders and the NAACP leaders and then they see the leaders line up and follow this man. What kind of message are we sending our children? And we’re the most vulnerable.

You’re sending the same message to your children that white racists used to send to their children, that some other group is inherently bad, that God hates them and that they must be denied equality. You are turning the oppression your own people received on others, with all the same excuses.

The NAACP leaders are generally ministers too. I know this because my family and I were NAACP members. I think the tradition goes back the Rev. MLK Jr, but I never asked and yes, the Black Community is very religious and looks up to ministers as role models, which I don’t consider a good thing and always thought it dangerous to consider all ministers role models. Ironically, even though my sons have the same father, only one of them is considered black and the other is not, based on various behaviours or whatever, by the Black community.

You see, some of those black children are going to grow up to be gay or lesbian, and having the first black President come out and say “you are equal, you are good, you deserve the same as your brothers and sisters” will have a tremendous positive impact on their lives.

“My position is African Americans are people also, we want the same things that all other Americans want, we are a part of this country, we have built this country, so we should be counted also and considered“.

Gay people are people too, they want what other Americans want as well, they too are part of America, they built America, and should also be considered and be counted. and to deny them equal rights and equal standing in American society is just plain bigotry in the same vein as that of the KKK.

“…do we need to add to it a President where little black boys and little black girls are hearing this great man in the most powerful position in the land say ‘I believe same-sex marriage is the direction that the country ought to go in.’ Then that same little black boy or little black girl looks to the heroes in the black community at the local level which are the preachers and the community leaders and the NAACP leaders and then they see the leaders line up and follow this man. What kind of message are we sending our children?”

The message that America was founded as ‘a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’, what kind of message are you sending by opposing this self-evident truth?

Then that same little black boy or little black girl looks to the heroes in the black community at the local level which are the preachers and the community leaders and the NAACP leaders and then they see the leaders line up and follow this man. What kind of message are we sending our children? And we’re the most vulnerable.

Those little black boys and girls learn that they aren’t broken and wrong for who they love. They learn that they aren’t broken because they want to be little black girls and boys.

You’re sending the same message to your children that white racists used to send to their children, that some other group is inherently bad, that God hates them and that they must be denied equality. You are turning the oppression your own people received on others, with all the same excuses.

Exactly. And it’s been heartening to see the tide turning, due in no small measure to “this great man in the most powerful position in the land [who said] ‘same-sex marriage is the direction that the country ought to go in.'”

Reading between the lines, my suspicion is that, like his white evangelical counterparts, one of Wooden’s concerns, even if not wholly conscious, is the erosion of his own power and prestige, such as it is. Wooden has his own rewarding niche in the status quo, and it’s undermined by a more powerful man who is playing an instrumental role in overturning primitive notions of the higher moral ground that had been supporting Wooden’s standing in the community pecking order.

I hate that: “whatabout the children?” argument. Children will seamlessly learn the strictures and acceptable behaviours of the cultures they are born into.The damage imagined being done to them by presenting homosexuality as normal is merely an adult’s bigoted projection

I’m a black man raising a little black boy. This guy is a dumbass. As I told a religious friend recently, in 20 years our kids are going to think we were idiots for even having this debate. My friend is an Obama supporter, and waveringly anti-gay marriage almost SOLELY “because the bible says so”. He admits that his other reasons are “spurious” or, as I would say, “bullshit”.

As the white grandmother of two little black kids, I found no trouble explaining what marriage equality was and why it mattered even if you are Christian (which my grandson was at the time).

One of the proudest moments of my life was about a year ago, listening to my 15-year-old*, very social, and very concerned-that-others-accept-her, on the phone reading the riot act to a friend who used “gay” as a pejorative. It was beautiful.

*Each of my grandkids is special to me for different reasons. She is special to me because she is such a firebrand, bosses me around, explains all the things that grandmas-just-don’t-understand so very patiently, and because I didn’t get to call her my grandkid until she was three.